The Nairobi All Share made it three up days in a row and closed yesterday +0.12 points at 130.87.
The Nairobi NSE20 firmed 11.67 points to close at 3,180.29.
Equity turnover clocked Sh581.916 million versus Sh1.991 billion previously.
There was an interesting story on the Teron Futures website, which speculated that the purpose of Mark Zuckerberg's visit to Nairobi was to see whether Facebook might be able to snaffle up M-Pesa, which is an interesting (if speculative) projection. Safaricom closed unchanged at Sh19.00 and traded 6.426 million shares.
Kenya Airways retreated 4.22 per cent to close at Sh3.40 and traded heavy volume of 4.89 million shares.
KCB Group followed on Wednesday's 1.90 per cent gain to firm a further 0.934 per cent to close at Sh27.00.
Equity Group firmed 0.96 per cent to close at Sh26.25, and traded 2.735 million shares. Sellers outpace buyers by a factor of two to one for now.
Diamond Trust Bank was marked down 6.04 per cent to close at Sh140.00 and on good ticket size of 204,300 shares. DTB is -12.5 per cent since the announcement of the interest rate cap bill.
A report in one of the dailies indicated that Centum Investments has changed its rules to allow it buy back shares from the market at a time the management and board believe the stock is undervalued at the NSE.
Centime's
current share price trades at a more than 30 per cent discount to its Net Asset Value (NAV). This report was the catalyst for a 6.57 per cent surge in the price yesterday.
Centrum
closed at Sh40.50 and was trading at limit up Sh41.75, +9.87 per cent at the closing bell. Centum traded 620,400 shares and buyers outpaced sellers by a factor of seven to one at the finale.
KenGen rallied 3.97 per cent to close at a five-week high of Sh6.55 and traded 576,300 shares.
Trans-Century maintained its record breaking run to close 9.15 per cent better at 8.95. Trans-Century has rallied 98.88 per cent since August 26.
A headline article in Bloomberg yesterday read:
East African nations are playing an increasing role in driving growth in the world’s poorest continent as they ride a wave of cheap oil, slowing inflation and lower interest rates. Left behind: Former powerhouses Nigeria and South Africa.
The bad news for commodities producers has been a boon for East Africa.
And in another Bloomberg Article headlined ''Kenyan Lenders Push Central Bank to Clarify Rate-Cap Law''.
Banks last week began cutting the cost of loans to a maximum of 14.5 per cent after President Uhuru Kenyatta on August 24 signed a law setting commercial lending rates at no more than four percentage points above the central bank base rate. Two weeks later, lenders are still unclear whether that refers to the Central Bank Rate, currently at 10.5 percent, or the Kenya Banks’ Reference Rate, which is at 8.9 per cent, said Lamin Manjang, chairman of Kenya Bankers Association.